UPDATE: Martin read the following post and accused me of woolly thinking and rambling. So here’s a shorter, sharper representation of my views on Christianity.
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I am a committed atheist although I was entirely educated at Anglican schools. Despite my religious upbringing in the heart of the established church, something always perplexed me. Why is it that, when Jesus was such a political radical, have Christian churches become the oppressive power that he himself railed against in The Beatitudes?
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.Blessed are the meek,
for they shall possess the earth.Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice,
for they shall be satisfied.Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called sons of God.Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Well, Christians have had endless centuries to make that come true and it patently hasn’t. Why? Why do the religious so often choose to deify the messenger rather than listen to the message?
It might be because eminent historical thinkers such as Jesus are venerated as gods by their devotees, who choose to treat them like comic superheroes rather than the exceptional, yet human and flawed, thinkers that they were.
Strip away the magic accoutrements and what you see in the historical, corporeal figure of Jesus is a fallible human being trying to work out how it might be possible for societies and individuals to live at peace with one another. The core message of Christinity is not difficult to ascertain: do as you would be done by. But to some that is a radical, dangerous poltical message: they don’t want to do as they would be done by, they want to do as they like: and those people have managed to turn a political movement into an edifice of organised religion that enables them to do just that.
Today’s cult of politico/religious celebrity has its roots in the politics of ancient times. Just as today, there were those with an interest in maintaining the status quo. In this case it was not only those with interests in temple-building, temple accoutrements, unguents, hereditary priesthood and so on -the whole temple and god industry – who were primarily interested in gulling money and offerings from the credulous, but also the political elites who used the temple industry as a means of controlling a sometimes rebellious populace. (Oh, I’m sure there were those in the god industry who believed in the supernatural too, but organised religion has always provided a good living throughout history for intelligent people with few scruples.)
But once Jesus himself was dead, murdered by his political opponents in the god industry and politics, how were his fellow radicals to spread his political message and combat the existing power structures, without their leader’s charismatic presence?
They soon learned that to attract followers you have to market your message, to tailor it to your audience, with a few cute stories and clever magic tricks. Alleged miracles like being flown up into the sky, or fed by birds, or raisng the dead: anything to give a bit of spice to what after all, was a dry lecture. After all, who wants to be sat and hectored at about how to behave?
The primary political messages of peace, love and charity thus became encrusted with fairy stories and tales of supernatural derring-do. The actual political core of what Jesus said, with its strictures about greed and dishonesty and excessive wealth and so on, was so weighed down with myth-making that it became submerged:the fairy stories became popular and the ancient elites saw there was more money to be made from co-opting this new movement than represing it and voila, the charlatans and hypocrites moved in.
Whatever the supenatural folderols added by later adherents, at the heart of Jesus’ message is that radical political idea, that challenges all the pillars of our society – that greed and violence are wrong, that we should love our neighbours as ourselves and that we are all human not divine. According to what I’ve read of the New Testament or commentaries on it, what he actually said as that what some call divine is not some external magic entity, but part of our innate human intelligence. We are alll divine. The divine is us, not magic
Take the Church of England’s theology of the Trinity, which to my mind (though IANA theologian) stems from a fundamental misunderstanding. What Jesus’ words say to me is that there is no god – what we choose to call divine is part of us, not something supenatural. What makes heaven is here on earth in how we choose to live and to treat each other. Deeds not words, acts not faith.
There is no beardy man in the sky, no gods, no flying horses, no personifications of thunder or the wind, just us and what we do.
But that message was turned it into a magic show by well-meaning disciples to raise money and support from populations all over the ancient world and so the radical political thinker was added to the pantheon of god/celebrities marketed by the religion industry.
Jesus was transmogrified indeed – turned from a simple carpenter who could think into a celebrity superhero.
What might have been a political movement to shake the world became an integral part of maintaining the greed-driven status quo. That’s what power does with anything that threatens it: liike a hydra it infiltrates, envelops, digests and regenerates into new forms, some of them hideous.
Power has turned a radical political idea inside out.
I’m may be a committed atheist, but even I can see the beauty and simplicty of the political ideas in the Sermon On The Mount. As a guide to live by Jesus’ philosophy is exemplary. But it wasn’t divinely inspired by a beardy man sitting on a cloud, it was written by a living, thinking human being just like you and me, a man who knew that what matters is what we do, not what we profess to believe. Not a celebrity a superhero or a god, just another man.
